Comments

Hi Larry: Your Kinglet cold weather survival theory is intriguing. I’d ruled out tiny birds due to their relatively greater surface area to mass ratio that you mentioned, and was thinking the Northern Barred Owl might be a candidate.

But back to the Kinglet, I was wondering whether they entered a torpor state during the night, and ran across a nice description of Golden Crowned Kinglet Thermodynamics in the Adirondack Almanack.

Amazingly, Biophysicsts predict that Kinglets must consume 2-3 times their body weight in high energy nutrients per day to maintain their normal — this surprised me — 110-degree temperature. Yet their night time survival strategies remain a mystery.

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